HBO DRM stops customers with older equipment from watching

For many cable TV subscribers, HBO is the reason they don’t cut the cord once and for all. The premium channel is home to some of the top rated shows, including Game of Thrones and True Blood. But a contingent of DirecTV users with older DVRs and TVs have found themselves cut off from the channel, despite paying for it. The culprit? Our old nemesis DRM.

HBO is absolutely terrified of piracy, and has gone to great pains to jealously guard its content from non-subscribers. Apparently, DirecTV was asked by HBO to implement HDCP, or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, on its content. HDCP was not added to the HDMI connection standard until after HDMI devices were already being sold. So anyone using one of those older devices is out of luck.

Those unfortunate users report esoteric error messages, and little to no help from DirecTV. Subscribers are being advised to switch over to Component cables, but that only solves this one problem. Component is lower quality, and won’t display some content due to “selective output control,” another lovely feature of your satellite TV service that keeps high-value films and programs from being displayed over analog connections.

The truly galling thing about this is that HDCP was cracked a several years ago. The piracy groups that are ripping and uploading HD videos of HBO’s series aren’t going to be affected by this change — they know the workarounds. It’s just regular (paying) people without the newest technology that are being hurt by this. The only recourse for subscribers that want to get access to the same content they have been enjoying for years is to go buy new TVs, which is a terrible way to treat customers.